America’s First World Problem: A Crisis of Democracy
America has its very own first-world problem — struggling to keep democracy and a Constitutional Republic on life support, while the nation faces a most consequential presidential election.
Will America break under the weight of corporate and institutionalized corruption, the abuses of power and factionalized governance and end up dropping off the pier of history into the nihilistic whirlpool of autocracy?
Meanwhile there is an ongoing Con on America that includes the proliferating promotion of propaganda, cognitive dissonance, mind meme manipulation, disinformation — and weaponized political divisions and policies and the rhetoric of violence against ‘others’ and the ‘enemies within’ — that increase the demise of democracy and the acceleration of an unsustainable society.
With the rise in the forces of fascism, marshaling on the porch of America’s house in history, what happens if it busts through the front door and takes a wrecking ball to democracy?
The ugly dystopia of everyday fascism would unleash chaos and carnage and the rapid stripping of rights and autonomy away from all too many people as this malevolent view of the world handcuffs and carries away the remains of American democracy — collapsed and splintered on the floor.
So in reading the digital tea leaves of social media and the strident voices of pundits, prognosticators and provocateurs — apparently there is an America out there lying in ruins, buried in garbage and now needs a strongman, carrying the flags of hate, fear, fatalism and racism — riding in to save-the-day from the clutches of a degenerate zombie democracy, then dumped in the landfill of history and set on fire.
Really?? America DOES need to become a WAY better democracy — at home and abroad.
And We the People in America DO need to restore a decidedly regenerative and constructive self-governance form of distributed democracy and a co-operative free enterprise economy for the many — instead of open hostility for democracy and a divisively degenerative and destructive form of accumulative regressive autocracy — aggressively controlling the lives of others, while also increasing the centralization of the economy and industry by oligarchs owning the bulk of society through a corrupt form of vertical command capitalism, for the few.
My take? We need to revive democracy and not just keep it on waning life support. The basic needs of the many — promoting the general welfare of the People — outweigh the exorbitant needs (and the mega-egos), by the few.
No need to break a country in order to ‘save’ it and follow an autocrat who continually disses and tears down the daily heart and continuing promise of the American Experiment, for the few.
It’s on us. What kind of future do we want to meet and keep? Can we reboot and regenerate the ideals and promises of America, while also providing for common sense defense and DO the hard work of creating a better future at home and abroad, instead of opening the dystopian gates of fascism crushing what’s left of democracy and selling out and selling off the remains of America?
As for me? I still love this country. And I have yet to give up on America despite all the grift, gain, graft, gaslighting and gaming of America going on, nor am I accepting an empire of lies, either.
I’ll cast my vote as an American on pulling back from the brink and the peril we face, as we DO stand on a precipice, and go with all the messiness and fragility of democracy of, for and by the people — plus citizen-sourced diplomacy and engagement in the world, standing for a better America and for all the people in America — together.
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